This article from earlier this month in the Lawrence, Kansas' Laurence Journal World is titled "With technology comes new set of questions for state courts." The lead:
Kansas City, Mo. — Moving a state's courts into the online, high-tech world is fairly straightforward. All it takes is money, time, and the right people and equipment. But that's only half the task the nation's state courts are confronting. The rest -- for which no technical manuals or prewritten programs exist -- consists of anticipating and addressing the perplexing legal issues that technology can create.The article continues:
To assist them, chief justices and court administrators from around the country have developed model guidelines on what to post, what to keep only on paper and what should still be seen only by court personnel, lawyers, and other parties such as law enforcement officers or social workers. The model's recommendations include keeping Social Security numbers off the Internet; making some records available only at a courthouse rather than online; and leaving the addresses of domestic violence victims out of online records.The conference was sponsored by the National Center for State Courts. Here is the conference program. Their Public Access to Court Records resource page is available here.Missouri, which began connecting all of its courts and putting some records online years ago, is among the few states that adopted their own rules. The state's award-winning "Case.net" Web site now contains searchable records from 33 of the 45 trial-level judicial circuits. Searching the site yields selected facts on each case, such as the parties' names, their birthdays (to distinguish them from people with the same name), type of case, important dates and final disposition. But some details, although they are public information, must still be viewed the old-fashioned way, at the court clerk's office. That's a nod to reality: Personal information about a minor child, for example, will be seen by far fewer people at the courthouse than if it were posted on the Web.
"The law says that if you go into a courthouse and request a public document, the clerks are required to give that out. But if something is put online, everyone in the whole world can go query it," said Nancy Griggs, court services director in Missouri's Office of State Courts Administrator.
Some of you may have heard NPR's Morning Edition this morning, which carried a story re "The Judicial Conference, which creates policy for federal courts, moves to make criminal court filings more widely available online." You can access it for listening here. More information can be found in this overview: "Privacy and Public Access to Court Records - Trends in 2002: Public and Private Dimensions Create a Diverse Group of Collaborators," available here. And this brief article on the Judicial Conference of the United State's efforts explains:
At issue is not what constitutes a public record (see "How Public are Public Records"), but how freely accessible records that are already deemed public should be.An illustration of how the Judicial Conference efforts will impact bankruptcy filings may be seen here.
The Indiana Supreme Court issued a release last Friday, dated 11/15/03, titled "Supreme Court Proposes New Access Rule for Court Records." It reads in part:
A new Supreme Court rule on public access to court records is needed to respond to the growing use of electronic record keeping in the state's court system, Associate Justice Brent Dickson announced today. Justice Dickson chaired a Task Force that included judges, news media members court clerks and representatives of various other interested organizations that focused the changing nature of the way information is stored in today's increasingly technological society."Our task force believes the proposed rule reflects the proper balance between the rights of privacy and the public's right, and ability, to access public court records. It is the result of a many hours of frank discussions and much hard work by our task force. I truly value their dedication," said Justice Dickson.
The proposed rule is a complete rewrite of current Indiana Supreme Court Administrative Rule 9. The goal of the task force was to comprehensively address the issues of public access and privacy in court records that are likely to be maintained and distributed in electronic formats. The proposed rule is designed to be "user friendly" and is based in part on a national model adopted by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators.
It operates on the principle that court records are public unless the information is expressly determined to be confidential. The proposed rule also encourages courts to adopt methods to enable the public to access the records from off-site and around the clock. It also specifies that certain identifying information, such as social security numbers, Personal Identification Numbers and birth dates as well as addresses and phone numbers of victims and witnesses be kept confidential.
Individuals will have until January 16, 2004 to comment on the rule. It will be become final after the Supreme Court has reviewed any comments and made any necessary changes. Please direct any comments to Ron Miller via email at rmiller@courts.state.in.us or fax at 317.233.6586 or U.S. Mail at Ron Miller, Division of State Court Administration, 115 W. Washington Street, Suite 1080, Indianapolis, IN 46204. To view the proposed rule and its commentary, please visit:
http://www.in.gov/judiciary/orders/rule-amendments/proposed.html